


how heartless the world can be

by 18305632



Series: leap forward, fall back [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Anxiety, Attempt at Humor, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Historical Inaccuracy, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vietnam War, War, Whump, minor spoilers through s1e9, no beta we die like men, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:23:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/18305632/pseuds/18305632
Summary: For the most part, Klaus has been sober. And it's been—Well. It’s been shit. But he’s functional, okay? He’s fine. He’s abso-fucking-lutely fine.And so Klaus breathes, and lives. He wakes up choking, clawing at the blankets; he falls and falls in his own head and no one spares a glance.And he’s fine.-----Klaus had been alone for so long, and the 173rd felt like a family. But now he's lost them, and his siblings have to step up or risk losing more of their brother than they already have.





	how heartless the world can be

**Author's Note:**

> This is coda from s1e9, and contains minor spoilers up to that point. non-spoiler coda-specifics are at the bottom :)  
> TW for : panic attacks, past drug use and addiction, and all the other fun things that go with klaus. if i forgot any tags or triggers, please let me know!!  
> BIG BIG thanks to woogwoo_wren on tumblr/Spannah339 on here (i'll link it when i figure out how!) for giving me the idea for this and then allowing me to bastardize it into 7k of angst. i love you <3  
> Title is from not alone from a very potter musical, because it's stuck in my head :^)  
> all mistakes are my own!! please correct me for anything u feel like :)

**I.**

Ten months, Klaus tells himself, was not enough time.

There’s a lot of ways that applies, actually. Ten months wasn’t enough time with Dave— but, then again, a dozen lifetimes wouldn’t’ve been enough. Every moment with Dave was a fleeting eternity, one Klaus couldn’t cling to like a dying man because Dave, in that washed out, harsh world, made him feel so vibrantly alive. Dave sparked color into the beige-washed bars and encampments Klaus lived in for those ten months— the first place, really, that Klaus had _lived_ in, not just inhabited, since Ben died. The mansion had been his home, there was no denying that, but just like the A Sầu Valley, it was a warzone.

He supposes that’s what made him feel so comfortable in the 173rd, before his squad made it a home.

Ten months wasn’t enough time for the war, either. He knows he’d only seen the smallest segment, that he’d been a part of a war he had no reason to fight; he supposes he wasn’t alone in that respect, either. He remembers asking Walt, once, how the hell he ended up there. He’d gotten a one-word answer: “Draft.” Walt didn’t give a damn about the war, one way or another, he was just sick of waking up every morning to the shouts of Sargeant O'Reilly on a good day and gunfire on a bad one. Klaus could sympathize, even though Glenn and Kenny vocally objected to their ambivalence with the genial nature of men defending their reason to die.

It never felt strange how quickly they all found themselves bound to each other, Lyle, ever the romantic, once noted, and though he’d outwardly sniggered at Bill’s emphatically wiggling eyebrows, Klaus couldn’t help but agree.

Ten months wasn’t enough time for him to forget about the twenty-first century, but it was enough time that he’d lost the habit of living in it. He doesn’t check the TV or computers for news, and finds himself picking up newspapers as he walks by. The sight of billboards, lighting up and moving, still jars him, and the commercials on TVs he passes make him think of how Lyle would absolutely lose his _shit_ if he could see any superhero movie in the past decade. Maybe he has, Klaus doesn’t know. He doesn’t know any of them, anymore. Doesn’t even know if they made it to the next century with him. (He’d like to, though. Maybe he could ask Diego to help him track them down? Then he thinks of the last time he asked for Diego’s help and realizes he can’t force his brother into any more of his messes.)

But most of all, as Klaus keeps reminding himself, ten months is not enough time for him to be this fucked up over it. It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking _batshit_ , how his mind folds in on itself, how he feels a hundred miles away when he’s standing _right next to people_. Ten months of shitty coke, of LSD, washed away with the cheap well whiskey the nearest bar decided to shovel off on them. Ten months of being so high on _Dave_ that the drugs seemed almost inconsequential, ten months of watching people die and pulling the trigger and not knowing how many bodies were there because of him.

The jackass vet in the bar, for all of Klaus’ vitriolic retaliations, had a point. What right does Klaus have to mope about, dragging other people into his shitstorm of trauma?

Anyone who’d care is long gone now, locked in another time, in another world. Maybe, he thinks, they never would’ve been friends otherwise, him and Dave and Glenn and Bill and Kenny and Ray and Walt and Lyle. Not without the bond of the blood and dirt that showered over them in those ten months.

But he knows he owes it to them to get his shit together, and as much as he wants to see Dave, a selfish, vain part of him is glad his sobriety impacts his ability as a medium. He doesn’t want to be this fucked up next time he sees Dave. He feels like shit knowing Ben sees him like this, and he’s never cared much if Ben thought he was hot.

(Klaus would argue that there was no _if_ , that finding him hot was a sign of life: the patient has a pulse, is breathing, and thinks the man with the green eyes is _stunning_ , they’ll be alright. Ben would give him a flat glare and maybe walk through him to give him chills, the bastard.)

(Klaus knows that both of them are playing at normalcy.

(He finds he can’t quite let it go, even when he’s falling to pieces, washed away in the apathetic flood of time.)

**II.**

So Klaus is, for the most part, sober. Not that anyone’s noticed. Maybe Dave would, if he were around. And he supposes the dead have very much noticed, Ben included ( _though it’s not like Ben’s had a choice to notice everything Klaus has done for years, has he?_ ). He isn’t using drugs to cope, isn’t allowing himself the temporary balm, and so far, it’s been—

Well. It’s been shit. But he’s _functional_ , okay? He’s fine. He’s abso-fucking-lutely fine.

And so it goes like this: Klaus breathes, and lives. He wakes up choking, clawing at the blankets; he falls and falls in his own head and no one spares a glance.

And he’s fine.

**III.**

He’s sitting on his cot, and it’s one of the few recreational hours they have at camp. Usually, they’d go out: obviously, Klaus loves the nightclubs that pop up around military bases, the women who flock to soldiers with fake names and saccharine-sweet words proving to be great conversation and/or drinking partners when they’re off the clock (though Nghia would probably wiggle her eyebrows and say off the cock, just to be contrary and make Dave blush or Lyle laugh); Kenny, for all his vibrant patriotism, says the red-light around here is better than anything in America; Glenn went where the whiskey was, and Dave went where Klaus was. Tonight, though, is a night in for them. Ray’s agreed to read the letters from his daughter, and everyone— even Klaus— finds them adorable.

Her name is Roxanne, she’s five, and she is an _artist_. She tells her dad everything that happens at home, from her mother making pancakes to Barb pushing her over on the playground (“Fuck Barb,” Klaus says; the world is wavy and his mouth is dry now, on account of shooting up a few hours before, but the sentiment is echoed by everyone present, and he feels like he’s touched the ground with his toes), then always, always finishes it off with a drawing “4 Daddy’s new frenz”.

When everyone’s finished cooing over it, Ray pulls out the letter he’s written in response (he writes back as soon as he gets them, then reads it to the group) and flips it over, handing the blank side (or, more often, the sliver of blank paper left; he tends to write more than a single sheet can handle) to Lyle, who sketches out a comic stip, this time in the style of some obscure Batman comic he pulls from his bag, with the creative input of the rest of the guys. Klaus makes grabby hands at it when they’re done, and Lyle passes it over, laughing. The paper is— slippery?

Klaus glances down, his smile frozen on his lips, to find the paper a dark, dark red. It doesn’t fall apart like paper usually does: it’s a denser fabric, drenched in blood, and he gets the thought that it might’ve once been green. He looks up at the Lyle, but there’s just a dark expanse around him, men ducking behind sandbags, and he’s clutching the chest of someone and there’s screaming, someone’s screaming their head off.

He realizes, distantly, that it’s him, and he’s screaming one thing, over and over. Dave is bleeding out and dying beneath his fingers, and there’s something so, so cold pressed to his head.

“Let me _out_ ,” he’s begging, and he’s wearing nothing but a towel, the dead clawing at him. His throat hurts from trying to yell over the din of spirits, eyes straining to cut through the pitch black of the grave he’s stuck in, and he can see bodies falling down, rolling near him as he’s drowned in the caterwauls of the dead, robbing his name of any meaning.

 _Klaus,_ they shriek, _Klaus, Klaus, KlausKlausKlausKla—_

He’s jerked awake by an snapping sound that echoes in the clutter of his room, his breathing short and quick, rattling in his chest, muffled by the blanket thrown over his bed. He sits up, pressing his hands to his forehead and rubbing at his neck, pleading with his body to calm down.

He thanks God that he hasn’t flipped out like this in front of his siblings, and then remembers what a contrary brat she is. He decides to thank Ben instead, with no explaination, and Ben inclines an eyebrow and goes back to practicing his pencil-throwing.

**IV.**

It’s that ugly-ass shade of green that Dave made more beautiful than anything on Ru-Paul’s Drag Race that eventually sets him off. It’s not a deep-set panic, or an instant freak-out like he’s seen on TV, or anything so dramatic and horrific. It’s not the gut-wrenching terror that buzzes in his ears, or the hyperventilating that seals off his lungs, leaving dark spots in his vision and tingling in his extremities. It’s not even the tilting feeling of falling and hitting the ground hard in memories he’s powerless to change, like it’s been so many times before, and some part in the back of his mind finds it funny that after all this time he’s found a new way to experience trauma. It’s a quiet shift of his mindset: one moment, he’s here in 2019, bright and plastic and filled with the hum of a million appliances, and the next he’s set adrift by that shitty, shitty green, in a quieter century and a louder home, that stupid fucking green surrounding him as he learns how to get dressed in a few seconds at the shout of a superior, how to load a gun and fire it into another man, how it feels to take and lose a life.

He supposes it must’ve shown on his face in some way, because there’s suddenly a snapping sound cutting into his thoughts and he nearly goes cross-eyed trying to look at it. “Christ, Bill, relax,” he grumbles, but something feels— off. Why? Why would it feel off? Is Bill out with that nurse he’d been screwing around with? Maybe it’s Kenny, or Lyle, or Ray, or Walt, or Glenn. Jesus, he hopes it’s not Glenn. Last time he’d called Glenn by the wrong name, the kid had flipped out. Even if he wasn’t out of his mind on X, it would’ve been hilarious. As it was, it took him and Lyle a while to stop laughing, and even longer for Glenn to calm down.

“Who the fuck is Bill?” a voice that is decidedly not Bill snaps. Klaus feels like he’s been spun around too fast, too many times, because that voice doesn’t belong here, with Bill and Kenny and Ray and Walt and Glenn. Something about the voice makes him shiver, because it’s all cold-empty-pale rooms and soft-tense-angry words, nothing like the voracious shouts of his squad.

 _You the fuck is Bill_ , he wants to snark back, but the confusion is crawling up his throat, choking him, and the words can’t quite seem to leave. In fact, nothing is working right: he tells his limbs to move, and they do so with the same effort Reginald put into being a good dad: none. He’s not exactly unfamiliar with the feeling, but he hates it all the same. He guesses he’ll just sit here until his traitorous limbs forgive him.

Bill does not seem to have the same idea. “ _Klaus_ , you said you were sober.”

 _I am_ , he wants to protest. “He _is_!” another voice shouts. Walt? It doesn’t _sound_ like Walt. None of these people sound right. In fact, that voice sounded like—

“ _Ben_?” Klaus chokes out. The world snaps back into place with sudden, disgusting clarity that gives him vertigo. Ben is staring down at him with concern, and Klaus notes somewhat disjointedly that he is, in fact, sitting on the floor. Luther looks faintly annoyed, and Allison is standing by the door, notebook in hand.

“You back?” Ben asks, uncharacteristically gentle.

Luther speaks at the same time. “If you’re going to be this tripped out, do it somewhere else. We don’t have time to waste on getting you sober when Vanya—”

“When Vanya what?” another voice asks.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Klaus giggles to Ben, who looks slightly less perturbed about Luther talking over him now that he’s being addressed. Vanya has appeared next to Allison, shoulders tight, fidgeting slightly. Klaus knows that, despite all Allison’s easy forgiveness, Vanya can’t look at her without twisting herself up in guilt, and he’s sort of proud of her for coming down in the first place.

Luther’s eyes widen. “Vanya, hi.” He’s doing the worst out of all of them, with Vanya. Allison’s been acting like they’re back to ground zero— a twisted game of I-ruined-your-childhood-and-ignored-your-trauma-and-you-almost-killed-me-so-I-guess-we’re-even. Ben’s coping the only way he knows how: yelling at everyone with only Klaus to bear witness. Five’s been doing the same, with slightly better results, and Diego’s trying to move them all forward— but Luther’s been walking on eggshells, picking his words carefully and running when he can’t.

Like now. He’s shifting from foot to foot, antsy, but Vanya and Allison are blocking the closest doorway, and the window of time in which he could make a fast excuse and flee is quickly closing. Allison, taking pity, scrawls something on her whiteboard, and everyone is silent for a moment, the squeak of the marker absorbed by the vast room.

“L’s just being a dickhead,” it reads. _Dickhead_ is underlined twice. Klaus sniggers, both at the idea of Allison writing _dickhead_ and Luther’s affronted expression. Vanya’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, and Ben groans, vanishing through the wall.

“About what?” Vanya tentatively pushes. She’s been like that a lot, now: hesitant, meek. The whole house is trying to duct-tape an active fault line.

Klaus blinks, trying to clear his head enough to remember. “Luther,” he drawls, forcing himself to relish in the resigned face his brother pulls (even though it feels empty, has for so long; he’s sick of being the depraved, desperate creature they all see him as), “is questioning my sobriety. Mine!” He collapses his upper body against the floor and flings a hand across his chest, melodramatic.

Vanya relaxes some, a smile twitching to life on her drawn face, and Klaus feels somewhat accomplished. At least, until Luther opens his mouth again.

“I’m just saying, we don’t have time to focus on Klaus acting up when we’re trying to help Vanya get her powers under control,” he presses.

Ben flashes through the wall and stalks towards Luther. Klaus raises an eyebrow at Ben’s wasted dramatic exit. “Acting up?” he fumes. “You piece of shit monkey, he’s our _brother_ —”

He’s silenced by the squeak of the marker, again, and Klaus turns to look at the board Allison insistently taps. “IDT it’s an act.” Vanya is nodding slightly.

Luther, realizing his misstep, backtracks. “I’m not saying he’s _acting_ , I’m just saying—”

Five, ever the master of timing, pushes into the space behind Luther, his irritated voice making Luther jump. “That he’s not worth our time?”

“What is this, the Klaus defense squad?” Klaus muses, waving his hands in the air and pushing himself into a standing position. “Really, gang, if the drugs get me this much attention, I might stop stealing Allison’s clothes!” He sends an appraising look at his outfit— a gaudy, neon-pink tank top with the words _I have a Ph.D. (Pretty Huge Dick)_ scrawled across it and a paisley bell-bottoms— and hums. “Actually, that’s more of a personal choice. Sorry, Allison.” She grins.

Everyone’s ignoring him again, and he suddenly feels tired of being another battlefield for their petty family squabbles. He shuffles to the bar as a habit, stilling when he gets there. He wants a _drink_ ; God, he’s sick of being present all the damn time. But he knows this will never be a one-time thing; he’s not even trying to fool himself this time. Once he breaks this streak, it’s over; he’ll be back where he started within a day, and as much as he detests being sober, he hates himself high even more.

So he sits, fiddling with an empty martini glass and debating asking Five where he stashes the marshmallows, until his name forces him to tune back into the conversation.

“—and Klaus can’t even stay away from the bar _in his own home_ ,” Luther is saying, and Klaus guiltily glances down at his incriminating glass, empty as he’d planned on it being.

“Christ, Luther, maybe we shouldn’t _have_ a fully-stocked bar in the home of a recovering addict!” Diego snarls, and _hey_ , Diego’s here; Klaus didn’t even notice his entrance. This in mind, he waves cheerfully at his brother, who gave him a disgruntled nod in reply. Vanya has retreated back into herself, shoulders hunched up near her ears, and for a moment, Klaus hates Luther for making her feel that way. Allison switches the board to her right hand and draws Vanya in with her left with a glare at Luther. Apparently, Luther doesn’t like wholesome, not-freaky family interaction, because he huffs.

“He’s so spaced out right now, Diego, can’t you see that?” he insists.

“Way to be supportive, big guy,” Klaus says, gesturing vaguely with the martini glass. “And I doubt Five would let go of the bar.”

Five grinds his jaw, then speaks. “Klaus, if it would help you, we can.” He doesn’t look stoked about the idea, but Klaus appreciates the sentiment all the same.

“As fun as that would be, I don’t think anyone here wants that.”

Luther takes a deep breath. “I don’t mean for this to be a big deal,” he insists. “I just meant that we all have our own issues, and we should handle them ourselves. Vanya needs our support now, and she can’t get that if Klaus is always the center of attention.”

Vanya bristles, the first assertive emotion she’s shown all day peeking through. Klaus frowns, knowing how hard she’s worked to keep her newly-prominent emotions under control, but before he can cut in and lighten the mood, she speaks up. “Don’t you dare blame ignoring _another_ sibling to their ruin on me, Luther.” Klaus whistles, impressed. Allison shoots him a reprimanding glance, and he raises his hands in submission, palms out.

At that, Luther winces. “You know I didn’t mean—”

A marker hits him in the head, effectively cutting him off. Allison crosses her arms and waits for him to hand it back before writing, “Dnt make excuses, be better.” Luther opens his mouth to reply, but Allison holds a hand up and he goes silent again as everyone watches her rub the board with her sleeve and start a new sentence. “Cnt change past, jst dnt screw up agn. Listen to K+V!” The last sentence is underlined, and Luther relents.

Klaus looks at Allison with surprise, but decides not to say anything tactless. He feels very vulnerable all of a sudden, and finds he doesn’t entirely hate it. Instead, he meets her gaze with what he hopes is genuine gratitude in his eyes, and by her gentle smile, it translates well. Even Diego seems to realize pushing the matter further won’t help, and he takes his leave at the same time as Five, slipping out of the window (which, why? What purpose does that serve? There are at least a hundred doors in this house.) while Five whooshes out of the room in a flash of light, Ben following suit. Allison leads Vanya out by the hand, looking for all the world like they’re thirteen again, and Vanya trails after her, leaving Luther alone with Klaus.

Luther’s arms cross— not like he’s trying to be intimidating, which he can easily do with his arms in almost any position, but like he’s consciously aware of how much space he takes up and wants to minimize it. He taps his foot nervously. ‘You know I didn’t mean—”

Klaus cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand, because he doesn’t want to hear anything else, doesn’t want to hurt or feel any more right now. “Ah, you funky astronaut, your words can’t hurt me.” He wiggles his fingers at him for effect. “As Rihanna once said—”

Luther rolls his eyes and walks away, and Klaus slouches against the countertop, alone.

And so the conversation ends, the empty room buzzing with latent energy, and Klaus’ freak-out has slipped out of everyone’s minds again.

**V.**

It doesn’t come up again for some time, actually. Klaus has his fits, or whatever Ben feels like calling them, but that’s not really a change from the norm. He still hasn’t told Ben all of what happened: all he knows is that Klaus served in Vietnam and fell in love, same as Diego. But Ben has the additional knowledge of the mausoleum, and every shitty ghost-related experience in the last ten years, so despite his eternal presence, he knows enough that the fits make sense, and that Klaus _hates_ talking about them. He also seems to understand that if Ben sticks his face through the shower wall one more time, Klaus will consider calling an exorcist for the first time in his life, and since Reginald had forbidden it and Klaus didn’t dare try after Ben died, neither of them know what would happen.

It’s an empty threat, but it deters Ben. Less, Klaus rationalizes, because he’s afraid, and more because he doesn’t want to see Klaus’ dick any more than Klaus wants him to see his dick.

Still, Klaus has a little oasis in the bathroom, and he spends a lot of time in there. He finds that there are, in fact, twenty-four whole hours in a day, and with sleep being barricaded off by nightmares and nothing to dilute the flow of time, he has to live through every single one of them. It’s not necessarily _bad_ , it’s just _boring_. Every day, he has twenty-four hours to exist in, and each of those hours are filled with sixty minutes, which are in turn stuffed full of sixty _seconds_ , which means he has roughly 86,400 ticks of the long wing of the barn-owl clock pinned to the wall of the shitty bathroom he’s sitting in to be a functioning, sentient person, _every day_.

So far, he’s counted 497.

There’s a soft knock at the door that he ignores in favor of continuing his counting. 498, 499, 500—“Klaus?” It’s Vanya.

  1. “Yes?” he snaps, uncrossing his legs and leaning back against the sink. 502, 503…



“Well, I was just wondering,” 504, “if you, um, wanted,” 505, “to come downstairs and eat,” 506, “with us? Luther says he,” 507, “wants us to start being a family again. You know.” 508.

No, he did not know. “He said that,” he repeats dubiously, eyes flicking away from the clock. “And he sent you to pass on the message?” _Fuck_ , he lost count. He wonders why that’s so upsetting.

He can imagine Vanya shrugging. “I volunteered.”

Well, at least it isn’t pure manipulation. “As per my favorite living sibling’s request, I will graciously grace you with my presence.” He hears her huff a laugh, and smiles somewhat. “Let me put on pants.”

“Not a skirt? Alright,” she agrees, and he hears her footsteps recede down the hallway.

He’s already wearing pants, but he needed a moment to gather himself before appearing in front of the jury of his family. He knows he hasn’t worn a skirt since the averted apocalypse, but he hadn’t thought anyone would notice. If he’s being honest with himself (and he rarely is), the breeze down below isn’t as fun as it used to be. It just reminds him of being tied to a chair and begging with his hands tied behind his back— and not in ways he’d previously enjoyed.

A thud at the door pulls him from his spiraling thoughts, and he groans, despite appreciating it. Ben recently figured out how to manipulate small objects and has taken to throwing them around to make a point. Physical contact is touch-and-go (a pun Klaus still finds hilarious, and Ben continuously criticizes him for), but interaction with the world is steadily increasing ever since Ben punched Klaus in the face weeks ago.

(It seems to work better the less amount of people there are to see it. Ben does not appreciate Klaus’ constant mentions of performance anxiety, either.)

“Klaus, hurry up,” Ben yells. “If you don’t pull out a seat for me, I’m taking yours, and then you’ll be too cold to enjoy your shitty meat-lover pizza.”

Klaus whines, standing up and wincing as his joints pop. “I wish I’d never told you about that.”

“I would’ve figured it out anyways.” Ben’s voice returns to a normal volume as Klaus opens the door. “It’s in almost every ghost story.”

“Well, so is a non-dickish ghost,” Klaus complains. “Where’s mine?” A pencil hits him in the forehead. “Christ, sor-ry.” He stretches, then shuffles down the corridor to the staircase. “When you’re able to lift, like, bricks, we’re all screwed.”

Ben’s looks contemplative. “I wonder, is it size or weight that’s the constraint?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Shut _up_.”

“Ow! Okay, okay!”

**VI.**

Predictably, Luther and Diego tried to outdo each other with the meal, which means the kitchen is in shambles and Allison ordered pizza. By the time Klaus descends the stairs and pulls out a chair for Ben, Five is picking off his cheese and piling it onto Diego’s plate, much to Diego’s chagrin. After grabbing a plate and a slice of Hawaiian for Ben, Klaus snatches Diego’s plate and sits down in the seat across before Diego can start yelling. As it is, he just mutters something Pogo would take away his knives for and pulls another slice from the box.

Klaus takes a moment to appreciate how far they’ve all come. Twenty years ago, they all ate professionally-prepared meals on fine china in dignified silence. Now, they eat Papa John's off paper plates, loudly blaming each other for the mysterious burning smell wafting from the kitchen.

“It makes no sense,” Vanya is saying. “How did you burn something? Weren’t you still prepping the meal?”

“Maybe electric problems?” Allison suggests, her writing messy as she tries to keep up with the conversation.

“You know, for forty-five years, I didn’t eat a single prepared meal,” Five says, rolling his pizza and preparing to take a bite from the side. Klaus gags, shoveling the discarded cheese into his mouth, but Five determinedly drowns him out. “If I ever have to watch you two in the kitchen again, I’m going back to that lifestyle.” This prompts Diego and Luther, who’ve been moping, to spring to their own defense. Or, rather, to attack each other.

“If Luther hadn’t plugged in the blender near the sink—”

“If Diego hadn’t insisted on making _orange ricotta pancakes_ for _dinner_ —”

“What if,” Klaus contemplates, words garbled by the immense amount of cheese he’s stuffed into his mouth, “it was all a dream?”

“What the _fuck_ , Klaus?” and honestly, fair.

“Like, the pancakes?” he plows on. “That’s not a real thing, right? Orange ricotta pancakes?” Vanya pensively takes another bite of her pizza, nodding along.

“The burning, tho?” Allison’s board displays. Ben groans.

“It was, like, one of those sleepwalking things. Where you _think_ you’re cooking some fantasy pancake recipe, but you’re really just committing an act of arson, and now you have to find a new apartment building because your roommate doesn’t trust you and you’re banned from the complex?”

“Is this from personal experience?” Luther demands, looking uneasy.

“Isn’t everything?” Klaus muses as Diego shouts that _Martha fucking Stewart_ made the pancakes. Ben sadly sticks his finger through his slice of pizza.

“Anyways,” Luther says exasperatedly, “even though Diego is atrocious in the kitchen— _ow_ — I called this meeting to discuss our future as a family.” It sounds horribly awkward, and Klaus goes to say so, but Allison’s glare stops him in his tracks.

She holds up her board, which says, “NOT A MEETING,” then nudges Vanya, who sits beside her. She jumps, then takes out a paper of her own.

“Um, Allison wrote this beforehand. She wants it to be read out loud.” She clears her throat and begins, hands surprisingly steady, and Klaus is reminded of Vanya when they were very, very young, before Reginald had the chance to bury the brightest parts of her. It’s fleeting, but it's _there_ , in a way he hasn’t seen since Ben died and the family fell apart. It gives him hope, and he’s silenced by the novelty of it. “We’ve all made mistakes that hurt each other. To move on, we need to admit and apologize for them. I’ll start: I rumored the people I love the most. I rumored Claire, I rumored Patrick, and I rumored Vanya, and those are things I can never take back. So, Vanya,” Vanya stumbles over her words slightly, but perseveres, “I am so, so sorry for taking your power and your life from you. I am sorry for my part in isolating you when we were young, and I am sorry I showed back up in your life when Dad died and acted like nothing was wrong. I love you, and that’s more important than anything else.” Vanya’s eyes are shining, and Allison makes no move to wipe away her own tears when she gives Vanya a gentle squeeze. She holds her hand and mouths, _it’s true_ , and Vanya gives a watery smile before speaking her own part.

“Allison, you know how much I—” she breaks off, sucking in a shuddering breath before continuing. “I never want to hurt you again, and I can’t apologize enough for doing it before. And the rest of you,” she gestures, “I’ve said hurtful things, and I wrote that damn book, and. I don’t wish I could take it back, but I wish I had done it without hurting you all.” Klaus gives her a thumbs up. Ben glances over at him, and he notices Ben is tearing up, too— something Klaus hasn’t seen him do since he died.

“You alright?” he whispers, trying not to draw attention to his brother. Everyone’s gaze swings his way anyways, but he doesn’t acknowledge it until Ben answers with a jerky nod, jaw set. Not satisfied, but also unwilling to press the issue with an audience, he turns back to the table and shrugs. “Ben,” he says in lieu of an answer to the unspoken question.

“Not the time,” Luther hisses. Klaus rolls his eyes but says nothing.

“This is dumb,” Diego snaps, kicking back his chair as he stands up. “I’ve got nothing to apologize for, ‘cept the same as all of you. I’m _sorry_ , Vanya, and you know that, but I don’t see why we have to rehash it at dinner.” Luther opens his mouth to— contradict him, probably, if Klaus is honest with himself, but Diego shuts him up with an accusatory figure. “Don’t give me that look. How about _you_ apologize, huh? You’re worse than I am. At least I didn’t defend the bastard that did this to us.”

“He was our _father_ ,” Luther growls, and great, now he’s standing, too. “He wasn’t a great one, sure, but he raised us. Who knows how we would’ve ended up if it weren’t for him?”

Allison is scrawling furiously on her board, but for the first time, no one waits for her to finish. Vanya stands as well (not that it does much, compared to Luther’s unnatural height) and joins in. “We don’t. We don’t know, because we never had the chance to live our lives. You— you were all happy? Being soldiers? I saw you, I know you weren’t happy. None of you!” She’s shaking, Klaus notes with concern. “I wanted _so badly_ to be one of you, and even I knew your life was shit. I’m sorry, Luther, but you had the most charmed life of all of us, and you were sent to the moon for four years just to give you something to _do_. That’s not the actions of a father, or even a fucking drill sergeant.”

Klaus sighs. “So he didn’t _like_ us. So he’s a dick. Why do we care if Luther’s on the same page?”

“Because the man who raised us was a _monster_ , and if he can’t admit it, then we can’t be a family. _Luther_.” His gaze snaps to her. “Look me in the eyes and tell me what happened to Ben was justified. Tell me that a child deserved to kill. Tell me he deserved to die like he did.”

Ben _flinches_ , so hard Klaus misses Luther’s response. When Klaus furtively reaches out to him, he disappears. “ _Fuck,_ ” he hisses through his teeth.

“Look,” Five bites out. “The bastard’s dead. He shouldn’t matter this much.”

Allison finally taps at her board, and everyone pauses, coming back down to reality. Luther’s chest is rising and falling like he just ran a marathon, or bench pressed a train, or whatever it is he does for cardio. Diego’s wound up like a spring, shoulders tight, hands balled up and shaking, and Vanya’s chin is up, eyes cold and mouth firm. Five pushes his chair back so he can twist around from his seat and read the board, and Klaus does the same.

“I already lost one family. I lost my daughter. Don’t make me lose you all to. I love you. All of you. Please. Let him go.”

A beat of silence. Klaus watches his siblings, weary. He thinks, if he were more hopeful, he’d be holding his breath, but as it is, he’s waiting for it all to go to shit. This isn’t the squad he’d been a part of, and there was no Sargeant O'Reilly to tell them to “get their heads out of their asses or die on the field, where I can’t hear you whining,” although Allison certainly had the same energy.

To his immense surprise, Diego is the first to sit down, and Luther follows suit. Vanya doesn’t _sit_ so much as collapse into her chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut, but the end result is… mostly the same. Five mutters a quick “I told you so,” then ducks to avoid Diego’s wrath in the form of a fork flying through the air.

“Clearly, this was a bad idea,” Allison admits, her writing somewhat shaky.

That breaks the tension. Vanya laughs, and even Diego cracks a grin, stabbing into his pizza with one of his knives.

And the dinner moves on.

Klaus isn’t sure if any of them know about the mausoleum.

He thinks he doesn’t want to know, because the possibility that they never noticed hurts less than the possibility that they know and just don’t care.

Either way, he supposes it wouldn’t change Luther’s mind.

Which is fine.

He’s fine.

**VII.**

The blue bunny bitch is back. Which makes absolutely _no_ sense, but Klaus figures it’s just his luck.

“What the fuck?” he complains, ducking under a blow from her partner. “Why are you guys back? We’re done! We’ve had it! Buzz _off_ already!” He punctuates this with a messy kick that completely misses: decades of extensive drug use haven’t been kind to his unpracticed hand-to-hand combat skills, and the 173rd hadn’t exactly been keen on improving individual performance standards.

“I know, right?” the masked person agrees— they’re new, and wearing a sheepshead mask (to clarify: sheepshead, the fish, not a sheep’s head, which Klaus would find marginally more tolerable), and their small stature belies the sheer brute strength they possess. “My first job with these people,” they continue, landing a left hook directly below Klaus’ cheekbone and _Christ on a stick_ that hurt, “and it’s a bunch of nutcases we’ve already lost to.”

“Fuck,” he yelps, hopping backward. “Can I just lay on the ground and pretend I’m dead?”

The other person sighs, reaching into their pocket, and Klaus has time to think, _Oh, shit, that better not be a gun_ , before they swear and pull their hand out, tightly gripping a pocket watch. Klaus is almost dizzy with relief until they shout, “Cha Cha! Handle this one, I’m late for a dinner date.”

Now, objectively, Klaus knows that there’s not a huge difference between this cartoonish murderer and another one, but the part of his brain that normally makes connections like this has decided to go completely offline, and when the blue bunny head turns toward him from a few feet away, a wave of panic sweeps over him so fast he nearly blacks out with the force of it. Voice tight, heart racing, he yells out for the only people he can think to have his back: his squad members.

He doesn’t remember which ones, exactly, he calls for, but he’s blinded by terror now, and the screaming is really, really annoying, so he stops. And when he feels hands on him, he just whimpers, terrified, too strung-out to do anything more.

The hands retreat.

“D-Dave?” he attempts, but his voice breaks in too many places for the name to be discernible. He tries again, but his voice is even thinner now, and the air steals the sounds before they leave his lips. He’s _afraid_ , in a way he’s never allowed himself to be, and it’s exhausting. He wants to curl up and die, maybe.

That in mind, he brings his knees even closer to his chest (he registers now that he had been rocking back and forth, balled up as small as he could make himself) and lets the creeping blackness take him.

“Guys, I think we fucked up,” is the last thing he hears.

**An Interlude**

In the Hargreeves siblings’ defenses, they had other things to worry about. They had _Vanya_ , they tell themselves, and Vanya needs help so she doesn’t kill the world. It’s a good defense, they’re able to reason, but it falls short of total absolvement.

After all, Klaus had been hurting long before Vanya knew about her powers, and it was so _obvious_ in retrospect. They just… didn’t care enough.

It’s a hard thing to reconcile, the idea that one doesn’t _care_ enough. It’s easy to say one doesn’t _love_ someone enough, because love is uncontrollable. It’s easy to say they didn’t _notice_ , because one cannot _fix_ something one does not _know about_. But in this case, the Hargreeves are forced to recognize that they did not _care_ enough about their brother until they found him shaking on the floor, cornered by someone they knew had tortured him and crying out names that were not their own.

Which brings us to the present.

“Guys, I think we fucked up,” Diego says, watching the masked attacker flee _again_.

At any other time, he likely would’ve been met with a comment about the fight they’d just been in. As it is, no one misunderstands.

Even Allison is pale, for once having no wise bits of wisdom or mildly patronizing moral lectures. Luther looks ill, his face vaguely green, and Vanya and Five wear matching expressions of horror. No one opens their mouth to agree: it’s plain on their faces. They have no way to contest it.

Vanya had been the one to find out. She’d been drying her hair in the shower when a message appeared on the mirror: HELP KLAUS. IN STREET. Panicking, she’d ran downstairs, shouting for her siblings, who had followed her out onto the street and made quick work of the assailant: five Hargreeves against Cha Cha alone in an empty street was a much less balanced fight than three of them against two in the vast expanse of their mansion.

“What _happened_?” Luther asks helplessly. Again, there are no misunderstandings. This is a long-overdue discussion about Klaus, and there will be no further procrastination.

“He went back in time,” Five speaks up. “He said he went back for ten months and destroyed the briefcase.”

“And there was— he lost someone.” Diego looks pained. “He wanted to get sober for him, said he served with him in Vietnam.”

“So, Klaus served in Vietnam for ten months and no one said anything?” Vanya asks. It’s not a reprimand, it’s a plea. _I didn’t know_ , it’s saying, _so how could this be my fault?_

Allison holds up her board. There’s a K, a speech bubble, and an arrow pointing from the K to a Pac-Man ghost furiously scribbled over. “Klaus can’t talk to ghosts when he’s high,” Diego translates, realization dawning on his face. “And he’s been high for—”

“Twenty-something years,” Luther finishes, coming to the same conclusion. “It was never rebellion, was it?”

Five shrugs. He wasn’t there for most of it, but he does remember an eleven-year-old Klaus sneaking into Reginald’s bar and carrying bottles of half-finished vodka under his shirt up the stairs, pressing a finger sloppily to his lips when Five made eye contact. Five never bothered to tell Reginald, because, between the security cameras, Mom, and Pogo, there was little doubt the man already knew. “Sure, some of it was, but he was haunted by his power— literally and figuratively.”

“He used to tell me he was jealous of me,” Vanya whispers. “Used to say that he and Ben would switch with me in an instant. I thought he was just trying to make me feel better, but—”

“And he doesn’t even trust us,” Allison writes, then erases it. “Called for others.”

“He doesn’t even trust us,” Diego echoes hollowly. “He probably thought he was going to die, and he didn’t even think to call us.”

“Because, in less than a year, he had people that were there for him more than we ever were,” Luther says.

“No,” Diego shoots back with a glare. “Well, yes, but— when he was kidnapped? Patch broke him out, and he didn’t come home. Didn’t even try to contact one of us. He can’t _drive_ , he got on _public transport_ after being tortured for _hours_ , and he had so little faith we weren’t even on his mind. And,” he hastily adds, at Allison’s glare, “we deserved it.” Luther nods speechlessly.

“We fucked up,” Vanya repeats grimly.

**VIII.**

Klaus is sick of waking up like this. Honestly, he’s kind of sick of waking up, full stop, but he knows Ben would upgrade to, like, throwing nail polish bottles just to spite him for saying it.

Surprisingly, the little ghost that could is mysteriously absent from the table he’s lying on, and the entirety of the Hargreeves clan is instead gathered around it, faces grave.

“Christ, is this a sickbed or an open-casket funeral?” he gripes, trying to push himself up. His ribs protest violently at the offense, but he takes no heed, painstakingly getting to a sitting position with a grunt. “On that note, I feel like we _just_ had a Hargreeves kid healing on a table, and I hate not being original.”

“Klaus, when were you going to tell us about Vietnam?” Luther asks quietly.

 _Oh, shit_. He doesn’t know how that could get him in trouble, but it clearly has. He’s been trying so hard, too, to be a good little medium, and it looks like he’s about to be excommunicated from the Umbrella Academy _again_. “In my defense,” he starts nervously, “I was left unsupervised.”

“It’s not a reprimand, Klaus,” Diego cuts in, glaring at Luther. “We’re your family. We want to know—”

“What?” Klaus snaps. He wants to cross his arms, but they’re the only thing keeping him upright at the moment, and this isn’t a conversation he wants to have lying down. “Which part of my brilliant life do you want to know about? The times dad locked me in a fucking crypt for endurance training? The first time one of Ben’s victims sought _me_ out and decided to haunt me for a _year_ since he couldn’t get to Ben? Or maybe you want to know about my first boyfriend, who helped me shoot up the first time, then doped up so hard he thought I was, shit, who knows, his ex? Maybe you want to hear about every joyous time I checked in and out of rehab. Maybe you want to know that for fifteen years, I saw the same EMT more times than I saw any of you. Is that it?” They all look stricken, and and he hates himself for the fleeting, vindictive pleasure he feels. “Do you know how many people die on a battlefield? Do you know how many of those people were my friends? How many were there because of me? How many broke through the cocktail of drugs I was on? Because I do.” He tries to take a breath to steady himself, but it hurts too much, and he’s already been set off. “I loved people. I love people, now. I’ve lived twenty-nine years, same as all of you. What I do with it is my business. Don’t— don’t pretend you care, now that it’s a hindrance to you.”

“We’re a _family_ , Klaus,” Vanya cries. “Of _course_ we care.” Everyone else is frozen, horrified. “Please—” her voice broke. “Please, let us be a family.”

Something drips onto his shirt. He registers, in some remote part of his brain, that it’s probably tears. “I—”

Diego steps forward. “We’re all fucked up,” he admits, softly. “But we don’t have to be alone.”

Allison grips his hand tightly with her right, grabbing Vanya with her left. Vanya, taking the hint, latches onto Diego, who reluctantly does the same for Luther. Vanya closes the gap hesitantly, and Luther smiles, vulnerable and glass-like. “We can try again,” he says, and Klaus lets himself hope.

**Author's Note:**

> i did SO MUCH RESEARCH (which, if you've read anything i've ever written, is exactly on par with everything else), but in lieu of my usual "here's some fun facts i learned", since this is the 60s, I'll give you changes I made:  
> I did not use any real names of any soldiers or sex workers from the vietnam war or the 173rd. the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team (if u squint really hard, that's what Klaus was in) did not fight in the A Sầu Valley (the 101st did), and didn't do much (if any) front-line fighting after '67, and Klaus arrived in '68. Here, both things happened.  
> i hc dave as 29, which presents complications for the draft (which was ~17-26), so. I moved that up.  
> generally, squads are ten people, but can be 6. I made Klaus' 8, because I didn't want to write nine more people.  
> I reference coke and heroin more than shrooms and the pills higher-ups tended to give members to increase their performance simply because I'm more familiar with their effects and they're easier to reference.  
> even though sex workers will often use names more familiar or pronounceable to their targets (i.e. american soldiers, here) I did not. I didn't want to :)  
> I worked on this for roughly four hours today, and I'm very tired, so i apologize if i forgot to tag anything.  
> SPOILER CODA: the moment when luther hugs Vanya, he just. hugs her. and everything’s ok :)  
> comments are the reason i'm still breathing, and even if ur comment is "slightly below average. 3/5 stars" i'll weep with happiness. i love you all so much!!!!


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